Cameras (e.g., monographic and/or stereographic cameras) are utilized by robots for a variety of purposes. For example, features determined based on images captured by cameras may be utilized for mapping environments, object detection, object pose estimation, obstacle avoidance, robot localization, etc. In many situations, it may be desirable to capture images of various portions of an environment from more than one vantage. For example, to determine the pose (position and orientation) of an object in an environment it may be desirable to capture images of the object from multiple vantages and determine the three-dimensional (3D) location of one or more points on the surface of that object. Also, for example, to determine one or more features of an environment that may be beneficial to utilize as landmarks in mapping of an environment, it may be desirable to determine that those features are visible and/or consistent from multiple vantages.
Stereographic cameras provide the ability to capture images of portions of an environment from multiple vantages and may be utilized, for example, to determine the 3D location of surfaces in the environment. For example, stereographic cameras typically include two cameras, or a single camera and multiple mirrors, to enable the capture of two images from two different vantages. However, in stereographic cameras used in robotics, the vantages of the two images are typically fixed relative to one another throughout use of the stereographic cameras. For example, in a two camera stereographic camera system the distance between two cameras (the baseline), and the pan and the tilt of the two cameras are typically set at the time of manufacture and remain fixed throughout operation.
Mobile robots also provide the ability to capture images of portions of an environment from multiple vantages. For example, a mobile robot can navigate throughout an environment to thereby change the vantage of a camera of the mobile robot (e.g., since the camera moves with the robot) and enable images of a portion of the environment to be captured from multiple vantages. However, reliance solely on navigation of the robot may present one or more drawbacks. For example, it may be time consuming; localization of the robot (which may be necessary to “localize” images) as it navigates may be difficult, slow, and/or inaccurate; navigation may not be desirable or possible when the robot is engaged in certain other tasks; and/or there are certain areas to which the robot can't navigate. Additional and/or alternative drawbacks of these and/or other approaches may be presented.